Five People Who Never Got Weir's Job in Season 4
by The Libran Iniquity
Summary: [AU] As it says in the title, five people who never replaced Elizabeth Weir in season 4.


Disclaimer: Not mine.

Spoilers: Beginning of season 4.

Author's Note: Five double drabbles, each exactly 200 words. Basically something I wrote while trying to write something else.  
Betaed by T'eyla and Exploded Pen. Thank you both :)

o o o o o

1

It had taken a little over three years, but Sheppard finally understood why General O'Neill kept bitching about being promoted. As cool as the position and the authority that came with it was, it was still a desk job, and the Stargate was still beyond his reach – even the kudos of being a full bird Colonel didn't make up for the wistful feeling he got watching Lieutenant Colonel Lorne take _his_ team out through the 'gate.

Every so often though, McKay would forget to not insult someone, or Lorne wouldn't be quick enough off the mark, and Sheppard got the adrenaline rush of leading the search and rescue team himself while Radek took temporary charge and monitored transmissions.

Most of the time, though, it was just him and Chuck in the control room, waiting for their people to come home. And despite all the new relationships he'd forged with Atlantis personnel – weekly chess matches with Radek, breakfasts with Heightmeyer, even the occasional dinner date with Biro and her extensive DVD collection – he never felt as close to anyone as he did when Ronon, Teyla and McKay would gatecrash a late night report writing marathon to insist he ate or slept.

2

Sometimes Rodney wished he'd never gotten the job. Paperwork was something he thought he'd given up when he'd left Area 51; mission reports were even more boring when he was reading three or four variations on the same theme, and even though he'd reluctantly taken charge after Weir had been caught in the explosion, it was never supposed to be long term.

Sure, it had been fun to begin with, outlawing citrus from requisition forms and holding Atlantis' hot water supply hostage until Zelenka caved and learned to shoot a semi-automatic, but in between all of that he had to deal with more people on a daily basis than he'd ever had to before, and if it wasn't for Teyla and even Sheppard offering him thinly disguised advice on how to deal with everything now coming his way, then there would undoubtedly have been a mass mutiny long before now.

And even though it did occasionally feel like Rodney was only keeping the chair warm until either Elizabeth was returned to them, or the IOA came to their senses and appointed someone with actual people skills to the position, there were times he felt like he could actually do this.

3

During Richard Woolsey's three days, seven hours and twenty-eight minutes as leader of the Atlantis expedition, there were a total of nine blackouts, thirty-four city-wide alarms at random times of day and night, twelve instances of transporter malfunction and one memorable senior staff meeting where the long-range sensors showed a Death Star en-route to the city.

After the ninth time he'd been trapped in a transporter with nothing but a stream of Czech updating him on the progress of repairs, Woolsey held an open floor debate in the 'gate room to try and 'sooth tensions' among the incumbent expedition members. The only people to show up were three Marines and a haematologist who was due to ship back to Earth soon anyway. Half-way through the meeting the city-wide speakers screeched into life and Johnny Cash started playing at full blast into the general vicinity of Stargate operations.

Three days, seven hours and twenty-nine minutes after announcing he was to replace Doctor Weir, Richard Woolsey pled with Colonel Caldwell for asylum on the _Daedalus_ and passage back to Earth. The Atlantis expedition cheered as the ship left sensor range, and the position for expedition leader was left wide open once again.

4

Stephen Caldwell hadn't believed Woolsey when he'd told him he could be in line to get Weir's job almost a year ago, and these were far from the circumstances he'd imagined getting a permanent Atlantis-based position in. There was little to no morale among the personnel, and the military contingent displayed more loyalty to Sheppard than to Sheppard's superior officer. The Lieutenant Colonel's past record with authority notwithstanding, Stephen knew right from the beginning that he was going to have his work cut out for him in this galaxy.

It took a long time for the majority of the expedition to treat him as if he actually was the leader of the expedition, and not some temp the IOA had sent in while Doctor Weir was simply MIA, and in that time, Stephen learned things as well; that military and civilians alike could mourn a leader who wasn't truly dead, that revealing he had a Master's in Psychology was not the brightest idea he'd ever had, that once earned, the trust of Sheppard's team meant more than an IOA endorsement ever would, and that monthly paychecks were no more valid a form of currency than Columbian roast and bootleg alcohol.

5

It wasn't until Elizabeth was about to be taken in for the nanotech surgery that McKay and Zelenka remembered the machine that had both caused Rodney's brain to mutate on the path to ascension and later saved his life. Using the samples that "Count Beckett" had carefully categorised in the infirmary, Rodney activated the machine and started rewriting some of the basic operating code, while Radek and Doctor Keller transported Elizabeth's hospital bed through the undamaged parts of the city.

Rodney took almost another two hours recalibrating the machine until he would allow Keller to position Elizabeth within the beam's range. Even then he kept the power levels at an absolute minimum while Keller's medical team stood in the background in case something went wrong. It was another hour after that until the process was as complete as possible without completely draining the ZPM.

By the time they got her back up to the infirmary, Elizabeth was awake, and when McKay and Lorne launched their mission to find a new ZPM, Zelenka had gotten her wheelchair up to the Jumper bay to see them off before taking her to oversee the first wave of repairs to Atlantis from her office.


End file.
